cruisinqt

Thanks I’ll look them up

So if I’m understanding this correctly then if my girls take the train from Heathrow to London it doesn’t go directly to St Pancras and they’ll need to take a bus, Uber, or taxi over to St Pancras. As far as buses go, there’s no direct route from Heathrow to Dover with them either. And it sounds like there’s timing issues too. And I’m not crazy about the bus train combo with Victoria station because it wastes so much time traveling. Im leaning towards doing a private transfer from Heathrow straight to Dover. Their flight arrives at 6:45 am (on a Saturday) so we could get on the road fairly early (hopefully avoiding the heavier traffic) and arrive in Dover early enough to do a lot of sightseeing. If we decide to meet up with our daughters at Heathrow what would be our best option for traveling there from our hotel? We are staying at Park Plaza Westminster Bridge. Is there a train or bus near our hotel or would we be better off using Uber or a taxi? We will have suitcases but nothing crazy, we aren’t over packers. Probably one large suitcase and a carry on for each of us.

My husband has already researched which credit cards have the least fees while being used in London so I’m good there. I had no idea how bad some of these credit cards are when being used out of the country. So we will definitely do the touch in touch out with our credit cards. Thanks for your help.

Okay so it sounds like we should either meet up at St Pancras station and take the train to Dover from there or meet up at the airport and take a cab or car hire service from there straight to Dover. So those would be my two best choices, right? Sorry about the Dover castle comment. I got Dover castle in Dover and the Abbey and cathedral in Canterbury confused. I meant we were going to Canterbury to see the cathedral and abbey then later we will look at the castle in Dover.

Our daughters (22 & 25) have decided to join us on our cruise. We are arriving in London several days prior to the cruise and doing some sightseeing. Our daughters are arriving one day prior to the cruise. We want to meet up with them and head over to our hotel in Dover the day they arrive (one day prior to the cruise). Hopefully we can drop our luggage off at the hotel (Best Western Plus in Dover) then head into Canterbury to see Dover castle. Our problem is where to meet up with them and what transportation to use to get to Dover. They will be arriving at Heathrow Airport at 6:25 am on Saturday 8/19/23. Since it’s a Saturday and there won’t be rush hour traffic and it’s the day before the cruise and fairly early in the day we were thinking a car service might be best. We are looking for something quick, easy, and not too overly expensive. We could meet up with the girls at the airport and then use Uber, a shuttle, or a car service to go to Dover. Is this the simplest quickest route? Or should we meet up with them at a train station and take the train? Or is there something else that’s better that you could suggest? We are staying at Park Plaza Westminster Bridge and thought about having the girls meet us there then heading out but my husband wants to go to the airport. He’s worried they will be lost and confused at the airport since this is their first trip overseas. I’m not as worried, they’re extremely smart and graduated at the top of their class in both high school and college. Any suggestions on how to navigate from Heathrow to Dover?

There are a limited amount of comfort plus, economy plus, and other similar seats on most airplanes. Therefore, I’ve found that they sell out fairly quickly and rarely drop in price like normal seats do.

They are sister ships so they’re identical with a few exceptions like the shows. The main show on the Mardi Gras that everyone talks about is an illusionist and he’s extremely talented and puts on a fascinating show. The big show in the Celebration is the Big Top Circus with huge tents and acrobats. I would highly recommend eating at Emeril’s. It’s every bit as good as his restaurant in New Orleans at a fraction of the price. The beignets are fantastic, big enough for 2 people and only $4. I would also recommend the Bonsai Teppanyaki place where they cook right in front of you. Cucina Del Capitano was voted best Italian cuisine on a cruise ship and the reputation is well deserved, I’d try them too. The lobster and steak were top notch. Rudi Sodamin’s seafood place is awesome too. And any of Guy Fieri’s restaurants are an absolute must try (and they’re free.) There’s free freshly made pizza (cooked in a brick oven) available till 4 am. Bonsai Sushi is usually open pretty late I remember eating there after 11 pm. The kids would be in 2 different groups, 6-8 and 9-11. But they will allow the older child go to a lower age group. They don’t usually let kids move up to a higher age group but it does occasionally happen.

Yeah I saw a great offer on a last minute cruise too but I’ve already booked several cruises and couldn’t justify squeezing that one in. I’m hoping more pop up too. I’ve always wanted to do the Panama Canal.

I’ve seen some pretty good discounts but they’re all casino related offers.

With the elevators you just go to the kiosk and select a floor (tap the floor number 3 times for 3 guests etc). It will tell you what elevator to go to. That elevator will only go to that floor (unless it stops to let someone on), there’s no buttons to push once inside. I saw a number of people just randomly jumping into whatever elevator was open and hoping it was close to where they were going to because they were too impatient to wait. One day a young couple raced into my elevator and proceeded to ask me where it was going. I told them deck 14 and you should have seen their faces. They were late for dinner and didn’t even check to see if the elevator was going up or down. As I got off at my floor the woman sighed and told her husband “well at least we know what goes up must come down.” Her husband replied “yeah but how many floors is it going to stop at before it gets to deck 3?” The moral of the story: use the kiosk. 😉

That did the trick, thanks

I’m platinum and currently have 5 cruises booked and I get tons of offers for free or steeply discounted cruises. But 75% of those are casino related offers. I don’t think it has anything to do with what you’ve got booked. I think it’s more about how much you spend in the casino or elsewhere on board. If they make a lot of money off of you it’s worth it to give you a great deal. If not then there aren’t that many good deals. I have 2 friends I often cruise with (both are Platinum), the first friend doesn’t gamble but spends tons in the shops on board (she says it easier than buying souvenirs while in port), on the specialty restaurants, the cheers package, and always books the more expensive excursions through Carnival. She gets some pretty good offers. My other friend is more budget minded, she watches every dime and spends very long little on board. She rarely gets a good offer. So I think they offer good deals to the cruisers that spend over a certain amount.

Mine doesn’t work at all. No countdown timer or anything.

The app doesn’t work till you’re on board

I did the same thing earlier in the year. Just email the casino host and they’ll get right back with you and let you know what deal you booked. They got back with me in under 24 hours.

I’m from Texas and I can verify this. It’s always free the evening before but they say the next day because they don’t know how long it will take to get 50 miles out, especially if the ship is delayed in leaving. I just order what I want if I’m doing an elite cruise with free drinks everywhere though. If some charges pop up from the first day I just go to the casino host and they get it removed asap. It says free drinks anywhere on the ship for the duration of the cruise so they honor that regardless of when the drinks were consumed.

My kids used bottomless bubbles a lot though there were complaints about waiting at the bar forever to get a drink. They were always served (the bartenders are used to kids asking for sodas) just not very promptly. I’m assuming they put the higher cost alcoholic drinks ahead of sodas because they cost more and they get more tip money. But on a positive note we loved it in the MDR because our waiter had their favorite sodas waiting at the table when we got there every night.

We are Platinum and have been cruising over 20 years. For the first time ever I got lost in a ships casino. And it was onboard the Mardi Gras. The Excel class ships are huge! I felt like I was in one of those big Vegas casinos because I kept getting turned around not knowing which direction to go to get out. It will be difficult going on the Pride for our London trip this summer. I was spoiled by that big casino. At least I’ll get to see London though.

According to John Heald the Celebration, Mardi Gras, and Panorama all have it. And they’re working their way through the fleet. There’s no word on the order they’re going in or when they’ll finish.

If you’re strictly looking at beaches then the western itinerary would be better for you. Personally if it were me I’d pick the eastern itinerary. Amber Cove has a gorgeous multi million dollar cruise pier with pools, beaches restaurants etc that I love to go to. And St Thomas has some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. I’m not sure about beaches in San Juan but we once walked through old downtown and toured a beautiful old cathedral then ate an authentic meal at a local restaurant. We absolutely loved that visit. The next time we took a cab out to visit the rainforest and it was breathtaking.

Even though Carnival has made some cutbacks they aren’t super bad cutbacks like some cruise lines are doing. And they’ve tried to soothe our anger about the cutbacks by adding more free restaurants like Shaquille O’Neil’s Big Chicken and Chibang on the Excel Class ships. And when they added the new specialty restaurants Cucina Del Capitano and JiJi’s Asian they made lunch there free which is nice.

I’m not sure if this info is what you’re looking for but I’ll share with you what I’ve learned about international flights recently as I’ve been researching it extensively the last few months. We are doing our first ever transatlantic cruise and our first ever overseas long haul flight. At first I was more focused on what airline to use because I honestly just didn’t know where to start. After a lot of research I realized that the flight itself was far more important than which airline I use. Things like how long the layover is, how long the flight is, which city the layover is in, and which airplane will you be flying in (some are better than others) is what you should be focusing on. Here’s what I’ve learned. Your layover should be at least 2 hours long to give you time to go through customs and immigration. Some cities have more relaxed customs than others so do your research on your layover beforehand. Airplanes have different seat configurations such as 3-3-3 or 2-4-2 or 3-4-3. The 2-4-2 has less seats so the seats will be wider and more comfortable. Once you’ve narrowed down your flight choices you can go to seatmaps.com and look up the airlines planes to see what seat configuration your airplane will have. It will even tell you how wide each seat is, how much leg room there is and how much the seat reclines. That may not be a big deal on local flights but on an international flight it’s super important since you’ll be on the plane for quite a while. There’s also roomier seats that are between regular economy class and first class. They’re called premium economy. They have wider seats, more leg room, seats recline further, and you get other perks like priority boarding. On Delta they’re called comfort plus and on American Airlines they’re called main cabin plus. Which airlines are better for international travel? There’s a lot of good ones out there. I like Delta, American, and Air Canada. But that’s just a personal preference. Like I said, find the flights with the best times, and layover cities for the price then go from there. Good luck I hope this helps.

If you booked under your offer you will get drinks in the casino plus $1000 in free play and she won’t get anything. If you booked under her offer you’ll both get free drinks everywhere and she will have $200 in free play. They won’t honor both offers at the same time. It’s one or the other. So you will get whatever offer you booked under.

We’ve always done side by side balconies. We have them remove the divider to make it one big extra long balcony. You have 2 bathrooms, double the balcony space, and double the closet space. And if we decide to stay up late and talk or watch a movie on our iPad it doesn’t wake the kids because our rooms are separate.

That’s good to know for when I travel I’ll check it out. I usually put various sink detergents in my cart on Amazon and wait till they go on sale then stock up. It’s great for when you travel internationally.